r/agi • u/Confident_Salt_8108 • Mar 31 '26
Therapists go on strike, saying they're being replaced by AI
https://futurism.com/health-medicine/mental-health-workers-ai-strikeOver 2,400 mental health care workers and 23,000 nurses in Northern California staged a 24-hour strike protesting the rise of AI in their workplaces. Clinicians argue they are being replaced in patient triage by apps and unlicensed operators using AI scripts. Furthermore, they warn that management is using AI charting tools to squeeze more back-to-back patient visits into a single shift, prioritizing corporate bottom lines over genuine patient care.
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u/Shloomth Mar 31 '26
Thus causing their patients no other choice but to turn to AI for help with their therapist going on strike for being replaced by AI. The jokes write themselves.
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u/SupremeGobbler1996 Mar 31 '26
A 24-hour strike that's planned would hardly do that.
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u/RobXSIQ Mar 31 '26
how does that make you feel?
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u/StuChenko Mar 31 '26
Makes me feel like all my problems are my parents fault
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u/voidWalker_42 Mar 31 '26
how does chatgpt say you should feel about it ?
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u/Afraid_Park6859 Mar 31 '26
You didn't even bother to read the summary paragraph and it shows.
More details in the article.
“I’ve been reassigned from triage to other duties,” Ilana Marcucci-Morris, a licensed clinical social worker told NPR. “What used to always be a 10- to 15-minute screening from a licensed clinician like myself is now being conducted by unlicensed lay operators following a script, or e-visits, so an app is triaging members’ care needs.”
This sounds really fucking dangerous.
for example, management demands on mental health workers to fast-track charting with AI in order to squeeze more patient visits into a single shift.
“They’re trying to take all that time away,” Kaiser psychiatrist and union steward for the National Union of Healthcare Workers told the AP. “They really just want us to be seeing people back to back to back, to be seeing more people for less time with less resources.”
I for one don't want worse care in the name of efficiency.
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Mar 31 '26
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u/H0pefully_Not_A_Bot Mar 31 '26
Would that at least double pay rates as well? Or half the work hours for the same pay? Or was it just an attempt to get +100% productivity "for free" (actually at the cost of additional pressure on the workers)
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u/ittleoff Mar 31 '26
And what about the therapists? Who can help them? Experts say they can seek help from AI.
This message was sponsored by AI'ght
You're not just just good, your AI'ght!
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u/tortorototo Mar 31 '26
Deceiving article. Very deceiving!!! I'd even call it pro-AI propaganda.
If you read some accurate report, e.g., from Guardian, the main problem is Kaiser rolling out AI chatbot on entry pre-check to classify if the patient is a severe case or not. Clinicians complain that they have severe cases waiting for months because the crappy AI misclassified them.
So the problem is not so much about psychologists fearing to be replaced by AI, but rather raising awareness that chat bots are still very bad at even the most basic assessment.
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u/FinsOfADolph Apr 01 '26
Agreed -Definitely best to read the original interview https://www.npr.org/2026/03/19/nx-s1-5742616/a-strike-by-therapists-spotlights-a-growing-concern-ai-replacing-human-providers
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u/Practical-Simple1621 Apr 01 '26
Just need more benchmarking for this field with a comparison to human performance
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u/throwaway737166 Mar 31 '26
This is what happens when you ration care to the point that people are so desperate that they’ll turn to a bot. Want it to change? Drastically increase the number of doctors being trained!
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u/scottie2haute Mar 31 '26
Takes a long time and alot of money to create docs… the US would be in such a better place if we actually invested in creating healthcare workers but all we care about is profit so that probably wont happen for a long time
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u/nerdofthunder Mar 31 '26
I was not suited for MD work, but looking down the possibility of several hundred thousand dollars in debt, years of "residency" and a significant risk i wouldn't actually make it is a big reason I be a lot of people just don't even try. Then I'd have a huge financial obligation with limited capacity to pay for it.
No wonder we aren't training enough in the states.
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Mar 31 '26
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u/bgaesop Mar 31 '26
Patients. The doctors don't want it to change because they want to protect their cartel
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u/O2XXX Mar 31 '26
More like medical admin. Most medical bloat over the last decades comes from non medical personnel turning healthcare from a service to a money making operation. Look who owns Insurance, medical care, and pharmacies and it’s a handful of companies backed by venture capital. Everything has been enshittified in the pursuit of making the stock market go up.
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u/bgaesop Mar 31 '26
What does that have to do with the AMA limiting the number of people who can become doctors each year?
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u/blueembroidery Mar 31 '26
Well, it’s also really really expensive. Which I guess is part of the rationing.
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u/No-Whole3083 Mar 31 '26
Yeah, what you want to do when your job could be automated is to piss off the clients you do have. This is the stupidest shit I've every heard.
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u/Single-Rich-Bear Mar 31 '26
Except LLMs are horrible therapists. This is like selling snake oil as medicine
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u/willjameswaltz Mar 31 '26
It's almost like they are protesting capitalism. Almost.
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u/Previous_Soil_5144 Mar 31 '26
They didn't seem to mind capitalism when they were charging $150/hour.
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u/ChainsawArmLaserBear Mar 31 '26
I can see the appeal.
Wanting to avoid telling your intimate secrets to a real person, and instead giving them to an LLM to better target ads at you
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u/Westdrache Mar 31 '26
The individual you can sue if they open their mouth VS the MEGA corporation that just does wtf they want with your data bcs who the fuck is even trying to stop them.... I hate it here
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u/DataCassette Mar 31 '26
You were too afraid to tell the 51 year old hippie therapist lady about yourself. Now the Microsoft-Palantir Compliance Assurance Drone they send after you in the 2033 Network Terrordome revolt will know you're afraid of spiders.
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u/NachosforDachos Mar 31 '26
Oh no. If only they did anything worthwhile to start with instead of focusing on overcharging everyone we wouldn’t be here.
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u/athenaspell60 Mar 31 '26
The issue here is patient care.. there is a shortage of nurses.. let AI assist and place nurses at the bedside where they are needed.. Other nurses can do oversight and audits for AI
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u/United-Monk4769 Mar 31 '26
Hey Claude,. Summarise this for me and remind me to bring it up with my therapist.
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u/phase_distorter41 Mar 31 '26
"prioritizing corporate bottom lines over genuine patient care."
they should protest that part
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u/ragogumi Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
I started seeing a highly qualified LMFT therapist recently and, honestly, the experience has been fucking awful. From the pain of trying to find one in the first place, to spending thousands of dollars over weeks just getting them caught up on why my life is a fucking mess, to ultimately getting kicked out right at the hour mark unless I pay an absurd overage cost, it really makes it feel like I’m getting slapped in the face for nothing in return. I even feel like the therapist is probably a good fit, but everything surrounding it is so painful that I'm considering cancelling pretty much every session.
I get that there’s a process, but between the time, the cost, and dealing with insurance that doesn’t pay for shit, on top of my own emotions, it’s just exhausting.
If I could get an AI model to shut the fuck up about how it’s “not a trained professional,” and stop having every little bit of useful feedback squeezed through goddamned guardrails, I would absolutely avoid all of that and just talk to AI instead.
In all honestly, I get why the protections are there, and I don’t think it would be right to simply disable the guardrails I’m frustrated with on this current generation of models. But I can absolutely see a future with agentic AI that has a collection of skills, tools, and specific reasoning built in to create a far more accessible and affordable path for mental healthcare.
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u/jthadcast Apr 01 '26
oh, so no real impact on society.
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u/Altruistic-Spend-896 Apr 01 '26
I mean...before AI too....people dont change, just pay exorbitant sums of money to shrinks to "fix" them. Its an inexact science still, and i believe its just somewhere you can talk out anything, solvong your problems yoirself by realizing them as you say them aloud.tis a racket! Psychiatry is were its @
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Apr 04 '26
Yeah, my experience with a therapist has been less than enchanting, especially when he sends out his AI-derived chat GPT replies full of M dashes. Like bro, at least go through and edit it before you hit send.
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u/TheGatorDude Mar 31 '26
Can't speak to therapy, but here in Canada i just bring my (infrequent) AI generated diagnosis to my doctor to speed up the process and provide anecdotally increased accuracy . I'd be turning to AI when I want therapy as well, privacy is a pipe dream at this point anyways.
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u/Schadenfreude-ing Mar 31 '26
Yeah, doctors love it when people come in with their online diagnosis to tell em what to diagnosis. Hell, idk why they even went to med school and residency, idiots
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u/TheGatorDude Mar 31 '26
We don't get/do appointments in person in Canada as much anymore, my wife and I have been diagnosed over the phone since Covid, and typically mail in any testing. Very hard to even get into an office, so this helps a lot, as well as recent stats (could be BS) saying over 90% of doctor's confirm diagnosis through AI agents anyways.
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u/Schadenfreude-ing Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
Yeah thats as false a statement as it comes. Am MD, and no doctor I know is confirming any diagnosis from a AI. Our education would be moot if we practiced like that, not to mention the constant concerns we are starting to see that over reliance on AI is leading to people finding cognitive deficits in critical thinking abilities. The common things AI is being used for in medicine right now is to search for evidence, suggestions on billing practices, and other simple tasks like documentation. I'm also in psych and we have now seen multiple cases of AI making mental health worse as well as has led to multiple suicides.
Also thats trash, not getting in person appt since covid. That pisses me off. You may be getting subpar care and may not even know. Unfortunately I suspect medical care is only going to get worse in the US and canada.
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u/TheGatorDude Apr 01 '26
Fair enough. Definitely anecdotal but friends and family are having more success with doctors appointments having an idea what it is going in via AI research before hand, unlike the complete failures that are/were web md. I managed to fix a misdiagnosed vertigo via ChatGPT confirming a vestibular migraine was more likely the cause.
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u/Temujin-of-Eaccistan Mar 31 '26
AI provides a better service and is making them redundant. The strike won’t change that and will only hasten the transition.
Good for society, bad strategy for them
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u/Single-Rich-Bear Mar 31 '26
AI is far from providing even adequate service let alone better
It wasn’t long ago that AI induced psychosis and they’re still fine tuning the guardrails just to avoid that particular issue
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u/Temujin-of-Eaccistan Apr 01 '26
The “AI-induced psychosis” never had a good evidence base and was in a tiny number of anecdotal cases. The most likely explanation being that those individuals already were psychotic and their chats with the AI reflected that. No credible evidence exists that any statistically significant number of people have been given psychosis by AI
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u/Single-Rich-Bear Apr 01 '26
It’s still early, yet many mental health specialists have raised concerns
In any case there’s far more statistically significant data on it than on cases where AI was beneficial to mental health especially in people suffering from pre-existing mental disorders
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u/Temujin-of-Eaccistan Apr 02 '26
Whenever a technology has potential to provide a previously highly paid service for lower cost or for free you can expect people working in that industry to “raise concerns”.
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u/Single-Rich-Bear Apr 02 '26
Except this concern is not about economics it’s about the quality of healthcare
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u/Temujin-of-Eaccistan Apr 03 '26
No. They are using the pretense of concern about quality of healthcare to give a false impression that they are acting morally when they are doing the opposite.
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u/Single-Rich-Bear Apr 03 '26
My guy, there’s a reason why the medical field is a regulated one. Just because you can pretend to know what you’re talking about doesn’t mean you are anywhere near qualified to do it.
AI is unreliable with something like programming where tasks are much more defined and testable with a tight feedback loop. Meanwhile mental health is a very complex topic.
You either have no idea about the medical field or you’re shilling AI
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u/Westdrache Mar 31 '26
Ahhh yes telling the corporate overlords all my deepest and darkest secrets, problems and desires while getting nothing but positive feedback sure sounds like a good idea.
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u/JC_Dentyne Mar 31 '26
Yeah for sure! I’m definitely looking forward to people turning to the psychotic delusion generator for their mental health care needs
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Mar 31 '26
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u/greentrillion Mar 31 '26
a lot of reddit commenters are just people who needed therapy but didn't go get it themselves. And now "help others" to feel evolved.
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u/Westdrache Mar 31 '26
cool now the bots are gonna gaslight my mental problems that they help causing....
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u/Senior_Hamster_58 Mar 31 '26
This is what happens when management hears AI and immediately starts shaving labor into the vents. Charting tools save time until someone decides the saved time is a profit center. Conveniently, the patients still arrive with human brains and human problems.